Chapter 58 - Ensandmanned Princess: The "Once Me" Conundrum
I came back to the untethered space a few weeks later, though Tarne pleaded before that I take care of the issue quickly. I could only hope that distance from the hate for Akier was refuge enough, albeit lonely. When I entered the library, it was not so. The structure was a palace with great stone columns supporting a heavy stone ceiling painted with flowers. The windows out onto the dark beyond were gone, and so were the lights. Instead, a miniature sun was suspended near the ceiling, casting an intense white glow all over the open space.
I looked for the staircase down to the wooden box in a panic, and found it much to my relief. It looked the same, but out of place on the now stone floor. The inside was still wood, outfitted with a couch, and four chairs around a table next to the bookshelf. I sighed in relief. Something wild happened here.
The stairs to upstairs remained in the same area, and I followed them up to find the second floor with bedrooms just as stoned as the main library space. The only difference was that the attic no longer existed. The ballroom upstairs would make no sense in a stone house. I opened the door atop the stairs to the third floor to find Kara and Lila still asleep in bed. The Keir still remained on the floor where it fell when I extracted it. There was only one person who could have done this. I made my way to the main room and amplified my voice.
“Tarne!” I said loudly. I could hear the stones shake as the sound waves ran over them. In just a few seconds, Tarne flew in from the now grand entrance arc to the garden. She wore a white gown that seemed to have some consciousness. It moved in the air freely, and Tarne was just carried by it.
“Hey, Jack!” Tarne said, then patted the cloth to launch her in my direction. I put up a layer of water to slow her down, but she burst through it and slammed into me, off my feet and against the ground. We bounced up from the stone ground, as I turned gravity lucid to have us bounce into the air. “You’ve been gone for a while.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, landing on my feet while holding her up under the arms. “I was afraid of your mom, the other one. Lila has no memory of you being Akier anymore. It’s Kara that I’m worried about.” Lila wriggled in my hold and I set her down for a moment before she hit my leg playfully.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know you can do this. You have to do this.” Her face was smiling, but I could feel the trauma of rejection from her parents in that look.
“I’ll have to take your memory of it, too,” I said. “I think it’s better if I do that first. I’m afraid of Kara because she could have some sort of technology that would trap me inside her mind.”
“Ok,” Tarne said. “I’m ready to sleep whenever.” I nodded, then put a hand over her forehead.
“Dream wild,” I said, as the haze of unconscious thought washed over her. She was under, just like the other two. With a clap of my hands, the whole redecorating switched back to the wooden motif of the library. I sighed in relief. I had to have it look this way. I floated up to the second floor with her in tow. After putting her to bed, I decided to take the other two into their own separate rooms. I would not dive into anyone’s mind today, but this way Tarne was dreaming of a better life instead of living a lonely trauma.
When I walked back over, the Keir that was on the stone floor, was not where I saw it before. Maybe the switch to wooden motif somehow moved it. I worried for a moment, and put it out off my mind. Why would it move now? It had weeks to do something, if it COULD do something. I sighed. The Spooktober was getting to me. I grabbed my hair, and dunked my head into an ice bath where I could scream. When I came up for air, I was no longer in the library.
break
I came back two days later, with a sense of emptiness. The morning before, I pleaded with Fyntn to help me, though I knew he would not be there in the library when I stopped by again. I entered with no hope, and was met with another familiar face, though one I thought long gone.
“Denizen?” I asked, as my body formed physically in a purely imaginative space. “I mean, James? James Denizen?” He turned to face me, but said nothing. I watched as he pointed upstairs, then teleported there. Without a sound, he beckoned me to him using his arm. I followed suit, and teleported to his side. This could not have really been him. Kara was older when she arrived here, even if the trick of imagination saw her young again. Was he a void leech?
“They’re not waking up,” he said.
“I put them under,” I said.
“Why?”
“To erase a certain memory,” I said. “Can I ask how you are here? Kara said you died.” James opened the door to where Kara was deep-sleeping and stared for a while. When he held up the Keir I discarded from Kara’s possession, I tried to reach for it, but he faded it into his palm.
“She takes me everywhere she goes,” he said, “But I’m not the James Denizen you know. Before I was— before “he” was gone, the Order of the Keir absorbed his mind into the technology. He was recorded as the sentient operating every Keir out there. This change replaced the previous hard-working artificial life which had been through numerous generations of Keir versions. That person is still here somewhere, but relaxing as the new mind controls things.”
“Oh, so you ARE the Keir,” I said, disappointed in my own happiness. The hope that he was still alive somewhere hurt, not more than being wrong. I did not know James that well, but knowing he was truly gone brought tears to my eyes in reality. He was a chunk of youth in my writing, a story given to me by him from the ivy, and not as dark as Atroano Zisi’s. “How did you manifest physically then?”
“When Kara called me before,” he said. “I woke her up, but then I was removed from her control, and I can’t wake her up anymore. She isn’t dead, because I could bring her back to life if she was, but she isn’t alive, because I can’t wake her. The thought perplexes me. Are you causing her this uncertain nature?”
“I need her to be asleep,” I said. “And I need you to be a chunk of metal that you were before.” When I said this, James looked surprised for a moment, before compacting back into the shape of the Keir, a chunk of greenish metal with starlike glowing parts.
“How do you have control over me?” The key spoke, making me jump.
“I control this whole space,” I replied. “I think it’s best you don’t talk.” I waited as creationism altered the Keir so it did not talk. That was a problem for another time. I had to deal with… I looked over at the clock. Twenty five minutes. I woke up early, tried to get here earlier, and still ended up with no time to dive into Kara’s mind. I contemplated going into Tarne’s instead, but seeing as Akier Vilamones Moredo was buried in there somewhere, I did not relish the idea of taking him on either. I needed to have more time for the dives, or risk being at their mercy and possibly unable to return.
I looked around once more for Fyntn who I remembered said would be here, and sighed. I had to do this myself. Procrastinating the mind delving was depressing me in reality, and keeping me from writing other stories I wanted to bring forth. I grabbed onto the corner of the reality of the library, and yanked it to a white screen of nothing to exit.
break
I came back the next day, uncertain whether I had enough time to delve into any mind. I still hoped Fyntn would back me up, but arriving at an empty library said it all. This place used to be filled with such adventure, so many different things happening. In my mind, at the very least, it was a precious space. If I ever had the chance, I would recreate it in reality, design it with the heart of Mirossa Vianiss, and build it with the mind of Tiarto Evins. I wished that story would live one day, but only one book of it was written.
I walked up the stairs in silence, feeling light thanks to creationism. At the top step, I welcomed reality into the library. The wood creaked under my weight, and I instantly felt tired. My head hurt, and the air no longer smelled like leather and wood. I sighed, and re-activated the pleasantries of creationism. An important choice stood before me. Lila’s room was in the middle. To the right, was Kara’s bedroom, and to the left Tarne’s. I wanted to go right and walked toward it, but my feet took me left. I hesitated at the door.
“Fyntn?” I asked. “I know you have already sacrificed a lot for me. I can’t expect you to keep coming to my rescue, but I could really use your help with this. It’s something we both want, right? Maybe not. Maybe it’s a greedy thing that I want, to see these three happy for however long they can be, like they were with me out of the picture. I’m sure you’d agree that Kara deserves it. Lila has suffered enough, too.”
“And what about you?” Fyntn asked, popping his head out of a portal. I shook at the sight of him, happy he came to see me. It had been so quiet since all of them were asleep. “Isn’t your happiness important to you? Isn’t what Rebecca told you important at all?” I twitched at the mention of her name.
“I’m short on time,” I said. “Can you help me delve safely into Tarne’s mind?”
“You shouldn’t have trouble there,” Fyntn said. “Kara on the other hand, that will be a fierce fight.”
“Shouldn’t have trouble?”
“We turned back time,” he said. “Tarne knows she is Akier only because Kara and Lila told her. There is no inkling of who Akier Vil Moredo is in her mind. The person she once was has been stripped away entirely before it latched onto her. There is no Akier in her mind, no memories, no mannerisms, nothing. All of that was ‘uploaded’ into her mind by the void amalgams that he left behind. All of those are gone now. You don’t need me here, Jack.”
“I always need you,” I said. “But I know once Lila is gone, once Kara and Tarne are gone, it’s unlikely we will speak again. It’s not like you’d ever come to my reality. I’ve caused you enough trouble.”
“That you have,” Fyntn said. I smiled sadly, and lowered my head.
“Was I at least interesting?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You shook the fabric of your own reality, and a bit of the surroundings. But it is like you once told Kara, this happens often, with many people. The outliers, variants in a timeline that interact with how things are beyond their lifespan, are common. Not as common as the standard lives that don’t challenge the ways, but still not the rarest. Think of yourself as part of the bell curve where the line starts going down.”
“Average, huh?” I asked. “Ok. I’ll go delve alone. Could you… Could you watch over me even though?”
“Sure,” he said, popping his whole body from the portal. “Let’s go.”
I stood over the sleeping Tarne, a person once me, trying to exist as a woman in a created space. A thought occurred to me that if I made Tarne vanish with me from the untethered space, Akier would have never taken it over. I set up the same creationism concentration over her mind, and reached with my mind into her dreaming one. Inside, I was in a meadow full of flowers upon rolling green hills. The sky was purple, but the clouds white as ever. Tarne was sitting in the flowers, looking up into the sky. When she blinked, the sky changed color back to blue for a moment, then to green.
“Hey,” I said, coming up to her. She looked at me, smiled, and tackled me in a hug.
“Are you here to fix me?” She asked.
“There is nothing broken,” I said. “I’m just here to take the memories of pain from you. I’m here to give you back your moms.” Tarne squeezed tighter, as the sky turned black with white clouds.
“You promise?” She asked.
“I already promised it,” I said. “But I’ll promise it again. I promise, Tarne.”
“Thank you,” she said, wiping the welling of tears off her eyes.
“So let’s make this quick,” I said, as she blinked to turn the sky yellow. It now looked like a giant meringue pie above us. “Where are your memories?”
“Here,” Tarne said, and spun in the flowers. I knelt down to inspect a flower and found it displayed a reel of the first person view of memories. Finding the bad ones in the field would be difficult.
“Where are the bad ones?” I asked, then looked over in the distance where a patch of darker blooms split apart the green hill. I teleported there to inspect the flowers. Tarne tapped my leg, then made a small fist to compound the bad memories into one single pure black dandelion. I plucked it at the stem, watching the green take over to fill the spot instantly. As a last resort, the dandelion bloomed into a seed flare. I knew if I sent them flying, they would seed the bad memories over the green hills, but could not help myself.
The seeds of upset memories flew on a breath of air, but before they got too far, I set them on fire with the same breath. The fire encased them leaving nothing but ash glittering off into nothing. I looked to Tarne, who was sitting in the flowers again, flicking through colors of sky with her blinks. I smiled, and reeled myself out. Fyntn was there, standing right by my side.
“Thank you,” I said. “Two down. One to go.”
“A difficult one,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have to go. Thank you, again.”
“Tell me when you delve into Kara’s mind,” Fyntn said. “Don’t go in alone.”
“I won’t,” I said, then fell backward out of the library.
break
A musing fell upon my mind months after letting them sleep. My mind was equally at rest without Lila and Tarne, without the issues I created by wanting to heal. As they slept, I feared for my life, and what my death would mean for them.
Could the Rahin who never returned to claim me and Tarne intended for this to happen? This soothed a small chaos of their world. Kara was part of the Keir, but too elderly to keep them from farming chaos to eat. Lila was a bundle they meant to devour for a delectable meal. Tarne was… in a league of her own, a problem that needed solving to the sustained operation of forces at work.
The three of them were vulnerable to my well-being, and even if my story was still protected by Fyntn, the Rahin never got along with the Nth Goni.
Maybe I was overthinking it, while procrastinating the return to delve into Kara's mind. I feared it above all. Her mind was an infinite depth with plenty of scary things she could have encountered along the way. To her, I was a guppy of a scared little boy, bothering her life over and over. I respected her, and she had no need to respect me whatsoever.
And yet, I did not delve yet again, only mused upon my death, and what it would mean. The days were ok, and the night was free of terrors. I wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could.
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